Target Practice

Conservatives Are Being Attacked By All Sides For `Trampling On The Poor,' But In The End They Will Be Vindicated

September 24, 1995|By Stephen Chapman.

The best defense is a good offense, and many of the people trying to stop welfare reform find it more enjoyable to attack the motives of their opponents than to defend the status quo. They insist that conservatives are nasty Grinches whose greatest pleasure is trampling the poor for the benefit of the rich.

A New York Times editorial vilified the recently passed Senate bill as "harsh," "extreme" and "punitive." Times columnist Bob Herbert got himself into an absolute lather, denouncing Republicans for "mean-spirited and racist initiatives" that "pit the middle classes against the lower classes, while sucking money from both groups up the economic pyramid to the smiling faces at the top."

The Nation magazine said welfare reform amounts to a "war on poor people." Even conservative commentator George Will chastised Republicans for "a bombardment of severities."

This is a line of reasoning, if you can call it that, that once served liberals well: Giving people more money, without demanding anything of them in return, is the very definition of compassion. Giving them less money, or expecting them to do something to earn it, is cold-hearted and cruel. Plenty of people supported the expansion of the welfare state because it seemed simply inhumane not to.

The old tactic, however, won't work this time. The animating sentiment behind welfare reform is not indifference or vindictiveness toward the poor but a sincere and well-founded belief that existing policies are a disaster for them and everyone else. There is anger among taxpaying citizens, but it is directed mainly at the welfare system, not its recipients.

Clear-headed liberals recognize as much. Mickey Kaus, author of "The End of Equality" and a senior editor at The New Republic magazine, faults the Senate welfare bill for inadequate funding and harbors doubts about turning Aid to Families with Dependent Children over to the states. But he says the reason it passed is simple: "The general sense is that this part of society is falling apart, that it has vast social ramifications, that the welfare system has something to do with it, and that it has to be fixed. I didn't detect any animus toward the poor in the Senate debate."

If the Republicans merely wanted to ignore the problems of the poor, he says, they wouldn't bother proposing work requirements, time limits and family caps on welfare recipients. "If you want to write off the poor, the way to do it is to keep writing them checks and telling them to stay in the ghetto," says Kaus.

The focus on motives, in his view, is the last resort of people bereft of grown-up ideas. "The sooner we get the word `compassion' out of the discussion on poverty policy, the better," he says. "If people don't work, the proper response is not necessarily the `compassionate' one."

Interpreting welfare reform as mean to the poor is like interpreting parental discipline as cruel to children. In both cases, the point is not to hurt but to help--by teaching responsibility and self-control to people who have not yet learned it.

Long-term welfare recipients may not be morally to blame for being unable to function in the normal workaday world. But it's not kind to indulge that incapacity. And it's not cruel to expect the people who get welfare to accept the same obligations as the people who pay for welfare.

If American attitudes about poverty have changed in the last generation, it is largely because the character of poverty has changed. As Princeton University political scientist Lawrence Mead noted in his 1992 book, "The New Politics of Poverty" (Basic), the "poor of old were poor despite work, while the current poor are needy for lack of it." Poverty, he documents, "is very uncommon among adults who work usual hours at any legal wage."

What makes Americans impatient with the existing welfare system is that it encourages idleness and passivity, thus assuring an endless supply of people who require perpetual public aid. No one minds helping people who genuinely can't help themselves. But it's hard to see the virtue of helping people so that they don't have to help themselves.

Hope, said Francis Bacon, makes a good breakfast but a poor supper. The same could be said of good intentions, which are valuable only if they produce good results. The welfare system conceived by liberals has produced awful results, and the best some liberals can say is, "We, at least, meant well."

Good for them. If welfare reform succeeds in improving the lot of the poor, however, the beneficiaries will not spend much time questioning the motives of those who brought it about or thanking those who, in their abundant compassion, stood in the way.